


Summer and Moonlight and Lemonade to Drink

by eek_a_tron



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Armitage Hux Has No Chill, Bickery Banter, County Fair Setting, F/M, Fairs and Foodstuffs and Full-Canon Reference-Feels Oh My, Flangst (fluff and angst), Flucrangst (fluff and crack and angst), Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Crack, Kylo Ren is Doing Goth Wrong, Kylo Ren is a Big Goth Bruiser, Modern AU, Parrot BB-8, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Prompt Fic, Rey Also Has a Knife!, Reylo - Freeform, Rose Has a Knife!, Sun Conure BB-8, This Is The Softest Stabby Thing I Have Ever Attempted and I Sincerely Apologize Ahead of Time, Who DOESN'T Have a Knife?!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-23 16:40:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19705321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eek_a_tron/pseuds/eek_a_tron
Summary: "Ben Solo runs the extra-long hot-dog stand at the county fair and he's one big jerk.  Rey makes frozen lemonade smoothies."A fluffy, cracky, angsty, modern Reylo county fair AU.Prompted byTrixie Ren, that innocent, unsuspecting soul, and originally kicked off by thisthread fic.





	Summer and Moonlight and Lemonade to Drink

"Large. Without sugar."

A hair is stuck to Rey's face. Neither it, nor the big jerk currently shadowing her tiny window to the bustling fairway outside, seems inclined to move. "Sorry?" she manages, eloquently, around the hair.

Two crumpled dollars are already sliding toward her. "No sugar," the shadow reiterates.

"You want," Rey begins, trying not to let annoyance seep into the official operating system of her voice, "straight-up lemon juice? From a frozen lemonade stand?"

She fights the urge to hand him a whole lemon, uncut. She will not blow this. She's at work, and it took all of several hungry months before she fell into this sticky acid bath of a summer job.

The hair grafted to her face refuses to move. So does the jerk from meat-palace row.

It's a habit, Rey thinks. This is, after all, the same jerk who lurks at the edge of every livestock barn in which Rey happens to take her break. She'll be smiling at a pygmy goat, or gazing wonderingly at a chicken, or marveling at the speckled, translucent jar of some mad substance called "pepper jelly" — it's not _always_ cute animal exhibits she frequents — and the back of her neck will prickle with awareness. Sure enough, there he'll be, lurching around the corner, meaty hands shoved in his meaty jacket pockets. Or he'll be draped over a bench, glaring at some poor, saucer-eyed kid who was just trying to eat their cotton-candy without a vampire nearby. Or he'll be vaping. _Vaping._

Right now, though, his fingers just start to drum — literally drum, albeit slowly — on the counter.

"It doesn't come without sugar," Rey points out. Back straight. All business. But the damage is done: the annoyance has seeped into her voice. And, inexplicably, into her neck.

The jerk should say oh, or sorry, or any number of normal-person statements. Instead, he makes a huffing noise, almost like a cough — not entirely unlike the barn goat around whose ears Rey scratched earlier, on break — and disappears from her window. The sun abruptly resumes baking the stand.

Rey almost — _almost_ — considers asking the jerk to come back, to just stand there. Don't lurk. Don't annoy. Just stand, in front of the stand. Be my awning, she thinks. Just because the angle was right.

Because of business. Utility.

"That's the biggest goth I've ever seen," says Rose, cleaving a lemon with a loud bang behind her.

Rey jumps. The plastered hair finally gives up, slumping limply against her neck.

"Did you forget I was here?" Rose teasingly waves her knife: the tiniest of Sweeney Todds.

"No," Rey lies, sweetly. The hot dog jerk's crumpled bills are still on the counter. Rey's nose matches, then eclipses them entirely, crumple-for-crumple. "Everyone looks big compared to you. And there aren't any goths anymore."

"They're a dying breed." Rose resumes her merciless onslaught on the lemons. "Want to do something about that?"

It's Rey's turn to make a spluttering, coughing sound. "I thought we weren't going to talk about anybody from meat-palace row. Not after the Finn incident."

Rose's nose immediately crumples in solidarity. "Mmph," she agrees. A lemon takes the pulped brunt of her wrath. "We don't talk about the Finncident."

___

Less-complicated customers filter through as the day wears on. Rey (creatively) attacks the filter when the lemonade machine repeatedly clogs, eventually settling on an improvised netting-plus-scraping tool. It's arguably the best, and somehow least-sticky part of her day.

Rey forgets all about the bills, and the awning that wasn't, until nightfall.

"Whose change is this?" Rose demands, stabbing into the mystery of the crumpled dollars at their shift's end.

"Someone left Our Solemn Princess MacGyver a tip? About time." Poe is already in lemonade mode, apron on, his parrot — a sun conure, rescued from nefarious poacher-breeders — already hopping from his shoulder into its own specially-built, temperature-controlled work-cage.

(Ami, general manager and bearer of a thousand artisanal craft-pavilion bracelets, had not exactly been thrilled about this unexpected hire. "What's a _parrot_ going to do in a frozen lemonade stand?"

"Sounds like the beginning of a good joke."

"Poe."

"First of all, he's a sun conure. A rescue. He's very attached to me, Ami."

"He's loud, and he's a walking health code violation."

"He's cheerful. He's a _hopping_ health code violation. Kids'll love him, and Edgar Allen BB's coloring even matches the stand." Poe's smile clocked in at approximately eleven-million watts, as per usual.

"God, I hate it when you look at me with those teeth." The noise of bracelets clacking almost drowned out Ami's resigned sigh. And that was that, really. Bird on board.)

Today, Edgar Allen BB's trilling isn't enough to distract Rey from the rumpled problem on the counter. The bills are sweaty-looking. Probably counterfeit, she thinks, only somewhat uncharitably. Worse, Rose keeps poking at the money, obviously making far too many deductions about their possible pocket of origin.

Poe, oblivious, chatters about setting out a tip jar. Ami shut down the idea at the beginning of fair-season with a curiously fierce no, he muses. Maybe she'll change her mind.

Edgar Allen BB screeches in apparent disagreement.

("What's the BB stand for?" Rey asked Poe once, a bit haltingly, temporarily overcome with her good fortune in being allowed to feed the bird a peanut.

"Bird-Bird."

"I'm very sorry," Rey whispered to Edgar Allen BB, then, and also now, as long as Poe wasn't around. The little citrus-colored bird's squawking always sounded more like welp-you-play-the-ridiculous-name-cards-you're-dealt to Rey, after that.)

"Their new goon was here earlier," Rose mumbles. "He's ... a choice."

"He's not exactly new," Poe mumbles back, wrangling a bag of ice into the freezer-machine. "Do we _have_ an empty jar here? Should I swipe one from the canning pavilion?"

Rey lets them mumble. She only came aboard this fair-gig last month, thanks to Ami, thanks to Finn — her nose crinkles dutifully — but Rey already knows to fall silent when the mysterious "they" enters the conversation. She does brandish an empty paper cup at Poe, however. "Here. For tips. No need to turn to crime."

Poe blinks, then flashes her The Teeth. "Rey, always resourceful! Let's add your tip first."

Edgar Allen BB squawks. He sounds exasperated. Rey has recently learned that most birds do.

As Poe flips the crumpled dollars into the air, meant for the cup but landing on the floor beside her, Rey catches sight of a decidedly non-presidential eyeball peeking out from one of the bills.

Benjamin Franklin. Known for inventing the bifocals. Fan of turkeys, not a fan of syphilis.

One hundred dollars in cash is definitely _not_ the going rate for frozen lemonade. With _or_ without sugar.

Rey puts the paper cup down. Her head pounds. Her _neck_ — or at least, a headache-feeding artery — pounds, too.

"You have a bright future in sideshow-juggling, Poe," Rose decrees.

"Try, try again. That's what counts. Rey gets it."

"No one left me a tip." It's all Rey mutters, hurriedly, before bending to scoop the bills into her pocket. She tugs off her apron, slings her ancient backpack over one shoulder, and stalks determinedly toward The Side of the Fair Where They Do Not Go.

(She does manage an equally-determined little wave at the merry-eyed, bearded vendor in the stall next door. His pastel blue sign — HELLO THERE HIGH GROUND KETTLE CORN — is too glorious a run-on sentence for her to ignore.)

___

Meat-palace row is what the frozen lemonade staff call it, but it's apt.

There are no candied, pastel colors here. Neon lights abound, yet this section of the food fairway always looks gloomy. Grimy. It's also grindingly loud, thanks to the DJ booth currently staffed by a leggy, red-and-black clad, double-ponytailed woman playing the entire song catalog of lizards inhabiting hell. And while the bass drops are kind of a jam, especially for marching through fluorescent strobe lights, Rey also sees various fair-going fingers _jammed_ into variously-sized ears, clearly wondering why they ever wandered away from the soft, taffy-sweet, baby-animal section of the fair into this scary clown alley.

Rey has never even _heard_ of half the fleshy foodstuffs sold here. She snail-googled most of them, once, on her extremely patched-over phone, just to see if they were truly edible — back before she learned to stay far, far away from this particular section. Brandied banger on a pike. That meant a sausage on a stick, apparently. Pigs in a blanket, served _in_ a blanket. Well, that just meant on a napkin. Weird flex, as Rose would say, but even _she_ wouldn't know what to make of the Fried Dingo Babies stall. (Unknown, but fried in bacon grease.)

In the middle of meat-palace row, an enormous triangle-shaped sign dwarfs everything else around it. Its red, transistor-style lettering can be seen from what feels like the fair's deepest reaches.

EXTRA-LONG HOT DOGS, it reads.

Not creative. But memorable.

Seeing it, Rey slows down. She hovers beside a stall promising The Devil's Own Tacos, where an alarmingly high-cheekboned mascot beckons her. Its costumed skin is an inexplicably non-devilish shade of blue.

Rey shakes her head. She's not here for tacos.

Shadowy fair-goers surge around her in waves. Beneath the death metal streaming from the DJ booth, an undercurrent of sizzling permeates the scene. It turns Rey's stomach.

Or at least, it should.

"What," Rose pipes up, "are you doing?!"

Rey leaps about a mile.

"I could barely catch up with you." Rose's nose seems permanently crumpled.

"You _have_ to stop scaring me like that," Rey gasps out. She steadies herself against the corner of the taco stand. "And why — Rose, why do you have a knife? Did you bring a _knife_ from the lemonade stand?!"

"Of course I brought it from the lemonade stand," Rose answers. "I don't just _have_ knives." Her eyes are sliding back and forth warily.

The blue devil mascot gives her a thumbs-up.

And Rey doesn't say anything, because she, herself, carries a knife of her own, every day — but it's not a very big one. Not a _kitchen_ knife. Not that carrying a knife is strange. Not until Rey finds herself thinking too much about it, at this exact Rose-has-a-knife moment. "All right." Rey swallows. "Again, why?"

"You tore off like a maniac clutching that not-so-spare change, that's why, and when I saw you heading for meat-palace row — "

"Well, well, well." The voice eels onto the scene before its owner even sets foot onto the gravel between them. "The fish-gutting booth, I believe, is further that way."

Thanks to the greasy smells wafting around them, Rey almost believes there _is_ a fish-gutting booth at the fair. The guts are probably fried. Covered in gravy. Everyone who eats them mysteriously goes missing, and that's why the Extra-Long Hot Dog stand rules over this gritty part of the fair. It's a cannibal conspiracy.

A drawling laugh interrupts Rey's creepy imagination. "Watch out, Armie." The laugh detours into a phlegmy, hacking cough as the man takes another drag on his cigarette. Smoke coils around the striped bandanna pulled taut across his forehead. Below it, Rey has never seen so many face tattoos. She also hasn't seen any meat products that could _possibly_ be implied by his SPIDERWICH stall, either. "The little one's probably going to gut _you_ ," The Bandanna rumbles. "My money's still on the drifter, though."

Rose bristles, but Rey's hand rises, hovers, and flutters onto her shoulder. "Great talk," Rey begins, slowly. "But I'm not looking for you."

"We've had a rash of avian flu this summer, particularly around inferior sugar products." Hux, eel at large and manager of the Extra-Long Hot Dog stand, is armed with a clipboard rather than a knife. He continues ignoring Rey in favor of staring directly into Rose's reddening face. "Tell me, has the health department collected your mangy bird already? I've called several times."

"Has the health department collected your _face?_ " Rose sputters. Rey's fingers tighten atop her vibrating co-worker's shoulder.

Hux ignores this, too. "Or is this unexpected visit about your boyfriend? I do sympathize, you know. If he'd been a more-reliable employee — loyal, not a quitter, he probably wouldn't have fallen asleep after that graveyard shift. Wouldn't have crashed his motorcycle. Mr. Snoke would have let him apply for the day shift eventually. Finn _certainly_ couldn't hack it with the night manager."

"Isn't that you?" Rey inquires quickly, before Rose blows a Finncident gasket. It _is_ Rey's first fair-gig summer, but she certainly recognizes the sticky red hairs currently askew on Hux's otherwise immaculate, Gordon Gecko-style head. He just finished his shift. "I thought _you_ were the night manager. And day manager. Thought you ran this place."

The Bandanna nearly chokes with laughter. Or smoke. Rey can't tell. "He's been demoted. To co-manager," he croaks.

" _Promoted_ , Malcolm," Hux rejoinders. He stabs his clipboard with one long index finger; Rey winces at the effect. "I was promoted. The day shift is preferable. More money, more visibility. Less rubbish. Speaking of which," Hux intones, looking down his entire nose at the length of Rey's entire frame, "who are you, again? Another one of Ami's summer rescues?"

Why did she come here? Why hadn't she just _kept_ the money? Given it to Rose, to Finn, to Poe? Lined Edgar Allen BB's cage with it?

Why couldn't meathead Dracula leave his insults in his wallet?

A man holding a gold balloon breaks away from the milling crowd and meanders toward the SPIDERWICH stall. Somebody's dad, probably. Rey finds herself focusing far more intently on Hux's clipboard-tapping finger.

"A promotion. Is that what it was?" Malcolm is _also_ staring daggers at Hux. The interloping balloon floats perilously close to his face. "And here I thought I had seniority over you both."

"It's not always about experience, Malcolm. And you have a customer," Hux points out.

"I-I'd like four large spiders — spiderwiches — "

Malcolm reaches up and jabs his cigarette against the balloon. The loud pop synchronizes, somehow, with a beat drop from the DJ booth. "I'm on break," he hisses, sweetly. He stalks off into the gloom, and presumably the exit door, of his stall.

The blue devil mascot performs an unwieldy jig. Rey shoots him a look and is promptly rewarded with two thumbs up. Somebody's Dad, for his part, scuttles off in search of less-complicated food, trailing the string of his ravaged balloon behind him.

"Wow," says Rose, when sense returns. "This is really a bang-up way to do business, _Armie_. Really, really explosive stuff."

"You're even starting to _sound_ like your boyfriend. But I guess there's not much else to do when someone's in traction," Hux eels, a sinister smile creeping over his pale, bloodless lips, "except talk."

Rey's hand squeezes Rose's shoulder.

"And we're hardly hurting for business, as you know," Hux prattles on.

Rose slams her (knifeless) fist onto the counter of The Devil's Own Tacos. The blue devil immediately stops dancing and disappears through the back of his _own_ stall.

Rey is the only one who doesn't flinch this time.

"I know all about your skeevy business," Rose barks. Her kitchen knife is waving, and trembling, far beneath Hux's chin. "How many of these meat-stooge stalls does your boss run, anyway? How many shell companies does it take to launder all his lousy money?"

"I'd be very, very careful if I were you." Hux's tone becomes a monument to politeness. A figurehead for etiquette. Emily Post would have tea with The Eel, right now. "Spurious rumors and accusations have a tendency to cause accidents. Your sticky little crew had the opportunity to join Mr. Snoke's team — "

" _Opportunity!_ " Rose flares.

"But your boss chose unwisely." Hux leans forward, index finger extended. Accusing. "A running flaw in the company you keep." The finger goes in for a jab at Rose's shoulder.

It meets the center of Rey's open palm instead. "Don't touch her," she says.

"I'll do whatever I bloody well like, Summer Rescue. Especially when I'm being threatened by what still passes, supposedly, for sugar-slinging booth babes."

Rey closes her hand around his finger.

The Eel immediately pulls backward, of course, but his finger doesn't move.

He stares at Rey, raising the clipboard threateningly. Rey stares back.

Rose makes a high, piping squeak — or squawk — behind her, and steps to Rey's side. Neon flickers off of her incredibly-shaky knife.

Hux wrenches back again. Above the evening crowd that takes no notice of anything beyond mystery meats, joyrides, and thumping, wailing hellmusic, all three of them clearly hear his finger snap.

Rose's knife dangles, unused, unneeded, at her side. Her mouth hangs open.

Rey doesn't know why. It's just a finger. A fine-boned, ridiculously-named, cruelty-prone, power-craving, run-away, run-forever, run-until-you're-so-tired-you-don't-care-what-happens finger.

The Eel has dropped his clipboard. " _Ren!_ " he howls. Several crowd-shufflers definitely notice the commotion now. "Are you going to handle this, or _will someone else _call security?!"__

"I wasn't aware you wanted to make a scene." A shadow loiters against the front counter of the Extra-Long Hot Dog stand. A big, goth-looking shadow. A big jerk. And the way he's looking at Rey makes her wish that she'd just let Rose go ahead and stab The Eel's guts out after all.

____

**Author's Note:**

> (1) Moodboard [here](https://eek-a-tron.tumblr.com/post/186105140360/summer-and-moonlight-and-lemonade-to-drink-a)!
> 
> (2) The title is from a line in Ray Bradbury's short story, "The Rocket Man." I'm no fan of Bradbury the person (sweet yikes-distributing god, did he ever have some Horrific Takes on women and writing and progress, yikes yikes yikes) but the phrase "it was summer and moonlight and we had lemonade to drink" has become lodged in my brain and I cannot get it out. I cannot get it out. WORDS ARE COMING. :p
> 
> (3) Mature rating's on its way, probably. Not 100% sure. I know I swore never to post without completely finishing a piece ever again, but I started this as a fast-moving (lol) Twitter threadfic and sometimes it just comes down to Experiment Time in Scribbletown. Sigh? Sigh. 
> 
> Stop by [Tumblr](http://eek-a-tron.tumblr.com) or [Twitter](http://twitter.com/eek_a_tron) and say hi!


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